Want teens to apply sunscreen regularly? Appeal to their vanity

When it comes to encouraging teenagers to take measures to reduce their risk of skin cancer, new research suggests parents and health educators should emphasize how ultraviolet light causes wrinkles and other signs of premature aging.

In the study, researchers recruited high-school students and randomly assigned them to two groups. One set of participants watched a health-based video that highlighted skin-cancer risks, while the other group viewed a video focusing on the cosmetic changes due to ultraviolet light. Students completed questionnaires demonstrating their knowledge about ultraviolet light and use of sun-protective behaviors before and after watching the videos. According to a University of Colorado Cancer Center release:

... despite knowing the skin cancer risk from ultraviolet exposure, the group that had watched the health-based video showed no statistically significant increase in their sun-protective behaviors. On the other hand, the group that had been shown the appearance-based video reported a dramatic increase in the use of sunscreen.

“For teenagers, telling them [ultraviolet] exposure will lead to skin cancer is not as effective as we would hope. If our endgame is to modify their behavior, we need to tailor our message in the right way and in this case the right way is by highlighting consequences to appearance rather than health. It’s important to address now – if we can help them start this behavior when younger, it can affect skin cancer risk when older,” [says study co-author April Armstrong, MD.]

Share this article

Category

Tags

Popular posts

The scenario many of us learned in school is that two X chromosomes make someone female, and an X and a Y chromosome make someone male. These are simplistic ways of thinking about what is scientifically very complex.